In 2018, China entered a new ‘phase’ in its militarization of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys in the West Philippine Sea, says AMTI director Gregory Poling MANILA, Philippines – The year 2018 saw China enter into a new phase in its militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea – the increased […]

Faced with a weakening economy, a trade war with US and a united West, Xi’s task cut out Xi Jinping, heralded in the West as the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Mao Zedong, is heading towards failure. That’s the conclusion one could draw from Xi’s December 18 speech, commemorating the 40th anniversary of China’s […]

NEW HAVEN: Henry Kissinger, US secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, remains a rock star in China. So when US-Chinese relations go awry, Chinese leaders turn to Kissinger. In his 2011 book On China, Kissinger proposed that the United States and China should “pursue their domestic imperatives, cooperating where possible, and adjust their relations […]

On January 20, Donald Trump will have been the president of the United States for two years. His rule has been so erratic that not only the US but the world is no longer recognisable to his country’s allies and enemies alike. In the six years Xi Jinping has been China’s leader, he, too, has […]

The Pentagon is now taking a much more assertive response to China’s military muscle-flexing in the Indo-Pacific region than it did just a few months back. Early in September, a Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance flight over the South China Sea was harshly warned off by Chinese radio operators stationed on a fortified islet of Mischief […]

HONG KONG, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) — The year 2018 marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of strategic partnership between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) featured with political trust, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. The two sides have pledged to further develop their relations to a new high by adopting the […]

Marine economy sees 7.2% annual growth since 2012: report China’s southern marine economic zone including the South China Sea has outgrown the north and east marine economic zones in gross ocean product, reaching 3 trillion yuan ($440 billion ) in 2017, an increase of more than 80 percent since 2012, a report said. Analysts praised […]

Chinese workers are “flooding” the Philippines. That’s according to a story published recently in South China Morning Post. Worse, Duterte’s administration is losing count of how many Chinese workers are in the country legally or illegally, according to the same source. The flood of Chinese workers follows Duterte’s abandoning the Philippines close ties with the […]

It’s an uneasy time for Asian nations as the rivalry between China and the United States intensifies and uncertainty hangs on whether they can resolve their trade war beyond the 90-day truce. In this special series the South China Morning Post explores how the China-US rivalry is affecting four countries in Asia. In the final […]

China has astounded the world with the speed and scale of its creation of artificial islands and military infrastructure in the South China Sea. The first Chinese dredger initiated land reclamation in December 2013. Five years later, China has completed building its manmade islands and is now steadily ramping up its military assets in the […]